"Laura—gone out with a young man," said the doctor, musing. "I have been waiting for that all the winter—and he's extremely good-looking, Jane."
Mrs. Friedland lost patience.
"John! I really can't talk to you, if you're as dense as that."
"Talk to me!" cried the doctor—"why, you unreasonable woman, you haven't vouchsafed me a single word!"
"Well, and why should I?" said Mrs. Friedland provokingly.
* * * * *
Half an hour passed away. Mason and Laura were sitting in the garden of
Trinity.
Up till now, Laura had no very clear idea of what they had been talking about. Mason, it appeared, had been granted three days' holiday by his employers, and had made use of it to come to Cambridge and present a letter of introduction from his old teacher, Castle, the Whinthorpe organist, to a famous Cambridge musician. But, at first, he was far more anxious to discuss Laura's affairs than to explain his own; and Laura had found it no easy matter to keep him at arm's length. For nine months, Mason had brooded, gossiped, and excused himself; now, conscious of being somehow a fine fellow again, he had come boldly to play the cousin—perhaps something more. He offered now a few words of stammering apology on the subject of his letter to Laura after the announcement of her engagement. She received them in silence; and the matter dropped.
As to his moral recovery, and material prospects, his manners and appearance were enough. A fledgeling ambition, conscious of new aims and chances, revealed itself in all he said. The turbid elements in the character were settling down; the permanent lines of it, strong, vulgar, self-complacent, emerged.
Here, indeed, was a successful man in the making. Once or twice the girl's beautiful eyes opened suddenly, and then sank again. Before her rose the rocky chasm of the Greet; the sound of the water was in her ears—the boyish tones of remorse, of entreaty.